How hard is it to learn Chinese?

[Eug]

ABC - American Born Chinese

I guess it depends on where their parents are from though of course.

 

[z0mb13]

Do you use the language besides speaking to your relatives?
I thought ABC's are born in America therefore how would they be from Taiwan or China Mainland?

Yes I do, I travel to china/hk once in a while and the language comes in handy

I mean where their parents come from

 

[SheHateMe]

Chinese is as hard to learn as it is to win the SuperBowl for the San Francisco 49ers

 

[DCal430]

Do Chinese Descents even use their Chinese language skills a lot?

Would you say ABCs have a distinct accent when speaking it?

You must remember no mater how many generations a Chinese is born outside of China they will always be Chinese. Most are enriched in Chinese culture, writing, and dialect of their family. Most Chines Americans can read Chinese very well. Remember, Chinese are fiercely loyal to China, even 3rd or 4th generation Chinese. A Chinese American is always Chinese first and always loyal to China first.

 

[z0mb13]

You must remember no mater how many generations a Chinese is born outside of China they will always be Chinese. Most are enriched in Chinese culture, writing, and dialect of their family. Most Chines Americans can read Chinese very well. Remember, Chinese are fiercely loyal to China, even 3rd or 4th generation Chinese. A Chinese American is always Chinese first and always loyal to China first.

This is over generalizing but I agree with your point
they are not loyal to China as in the country, but they are very loyal to the Asian Chinese way of living (familial piety, respect elders, family over individualism, etc)

 

[PeeluckyDuckee]

I immigrated here since I was 4 so writing is a write off, but I can speak the layman's language just fine. But even then the technical terms and formal language, even though I hear it fine I don't have a clue the meaning behind what's been said.

I find an enjoyable way for me to learn the language is through karaoke, where when you follow the words you'll ever so slowly pick up on the characters. But even then that gives you recognition and familiarity, doesn't necessarily mean you'll know how to write it, at least not for me anyways.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

You must remember no mater how many generations a Chinese is born outside of China they will always be Chinese. Most are enriched in Chinese culture, writing, and dialect of their family. Most Chines Americans can read Chinese very well. Remember, Chinese are fiercely loyal to China, even 3rd or 4th generation Chinese. A Chinese American is always Chinese first and always loyal to China first.

Uhhhh, what?

I'm a Chinese-born Chinese American. And I'm "1.5" generation that might as well be 2nd generation.

I am NOT loyal to China. Fuck China. I'm American first and foremost.

 

[Capt Caveman]

You must remember no mater how many generations a Chinese is born outside of China they will always be Chinese. Most are enriched in Chinese culture, writing, and dialect of their family. Most Chines Americans can read Chinese very well. Remember, Chinese are fiercely loyal to China, even 3rd or 4th generation Chinese. A Chinese American is always Chinese first and always loyal to China first.

You're an idiot. I'm 2nd generation and China is a hell hole. I'm American, idiot. Screw China.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

This is over generalizing but I agree with your point
they are not loyal to China as in the country, but they are very loyal to the Asian Chinese way of living (familial piety, respect elders, family over individualism, etc)

Not me. Just today my mom went off on filial piety, family, etc and I remember thinking what a load of bullshit it was. There's nothing wrong with loving your family and sacrificing for family and taking care of your parents and letting them live with you when they get older. But the Chinese believe that all that has to *automatically* be the case simply because you popped out of a specific person's womb.

No. If you have parents that you can't stand and do nothing but bring you down you don't have to do anything for them. Or if parents choose to not become dependent on their kids.

Basically Chinese culture is stuck up on the selfish belief that parents can do no wrong, ever. And therefore their kids need to always show ultimate piety to them and listen to whatever they have to say.

 

[Sulaco]

Chinese is as hard to learn as it is to win the SuperBowl for the San Francisco 49ers

Thank you for contributing absolutely nothing to the thread with one of the dumbest replies on this board in some time.

 

[phucheneh]

As mentioned, the one benefit of Chinese is that the grammar is extremely simple. In English "You went to the store yesterday" but in Chinese "You go store yesterday". In English "You are going to the store tomorrow" but in Chinese "You go store tomorrow".

You just explained so much to me. LOL.

Seriously, I never knew that that was the root of their particularly bad English conjugation.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Anyone here successfully learned Chinese as a secondary language?

I heard that pin yin is very hard to adapt.

Chinese is a very hard language to learn, but I see a lot of westerners become very successful at it.

Be prepared for a LOT of rote memorization because there's no alphabet and the characters all mean individual words.

I can speak and understand spoken Mandarin, but can't read or write more than 20 characters because it needs so much memorization. Pinyin helps a lot, but even then it can be very very confusing.

For example, there are 4 tones that indicate how you're supposed to pronounce a word. The problem is that Chinese is absolutely littered with homonyms:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homonym

Ex.

huà - this is how it's pronounced, but any of the following four words is pronounced exactly the same

画 - to draw, a painting
话 - words / speech
化 - transform / digest
划 - stroke/draw

That's why a lot of Chinese often have to ask "Is that hua like in "to paint" or hua like in "to digest" or hua like in "to talk?"

I find that texting and typing helped a lot in character recognization because you first type in pinyin, up pops a menu where you can select the character you want, and that's how you type. After typing a lot you start to remember which characters mean what because you keep on selecting it over and over again as you're typing.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

You just explained so much to me. LOL.

Seriously, I never knew that that was the root of their particularly bad English conjugation.

It's different. They have modifiers, but they don't attach the modifiers onto the words themselves or directly modify the word like we do in English. Their modifiers are separate words in and of themselves.

Ex.

I eat.
I ate.

Wo chi. 我吃。
Wo chi le. 我吃了。

They're not used to modifying the word itself. And how can you blame them? Our system is complex and sometimes doesn't really follow any hard and fast rules

We sometimes just add an "-ed" at the end. Yell and Yelled. Sometimes we don't and instead change a letter. Drive and Drove. Swim and Swam. Sometimes we change both the letter and add an "-ed". Spy and Spied. Very confusing for people who just add a "le" to denote past tense.

 

[SheHateMe]

Thank you for contributing absolutely nothing to the thread with one of the dumbest replies on this board in some time.

That insult is overused.

 

[dighn]

You must remember no mater how many generations a Chinese is born outside of China they will always be Chinese. Most are enriched in Chinese culture, writing, and dialect of their family. Most Chines Americans can read Chinese very well. Remember, Chinese are fiercely loyal to China, even 3rd or 4th generation Chinese. A Chinese American is always Chinese first and always loyal to China first.

oh no you've exposed our grand infiltration plan! we'll now have to kungfu your ass.

You just explained so much to me. LOL.

Seriously, I never knew that that was the root of their particularly bad English conjugation.

english grammar is just ridiculously complex. why you no make it simple?! we make it up though with our tonal language and 2 dimensional word composition.

anyway for the OP i don't think it's *that* bad but you'll probably struggle a bit with the tones. writing is hard though. i've pretty much forgotten how to write anything other than my name in chinese.

 

[Imp]

So like illiterate Asian red necks?

I am surprised even Chinese people that can Speak Chinese don't know how to read/write the language. The writing system for it must be really something. 0.0

Shit.. I wonder if I can become more artistic by learning Chinese.

Ya... I'm trying to learn Mandarin using Rosetta Stone. I'm actually picking the spoken up quite well (guess why...), but gave up a few units ago on even bothering to learn how to read/write. I'm too lazy to bother to memorize so many characters.

 

[SheHateMe]

Rosetta Stone.

Please don't use that to learn a language. I beg of you....

Overpriced and useless.

Take a class if you can, or buy some books and find some language exchange partners, you will be better for it. I promise.

 

[Imp]

Please don't use that to learn a language. I beg of you....

Overpriced and useless.

Take a class if you can, or buy some books and find some language exchange partners, you will be better for it. I promise.

Already paid, sweetheart. It's the same price as one or two courses and this one doesn't get annoyed when I ask him to repeat something 20 times in a row.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Ya... I'm trying to learn Mandarin using Rosetta Stone. I'm actually picking the spoken up quite well (guess why...), but gave up a few units ago on even bothering to learn how to read/write. I'm too lazy to bother to memorize so many characters.

IMO Rosetta Stone is horrible. It can get you speaking and understanding some spoken phrases, but it never goes through the basics of WHY things are the way they are.

I tried Rosetta Stone to learn Spanish. It just goes through phrases and different mixes of words they've gone over. But I had no idea why I was saying "to drink" in one way in one phrase but differently in another. And it offered no explanation. Infuriating. Right now I'm just fucking confused with the different tenses because RS offers no explanation. The best I can do is observe differences and make a guess as to what the rule should be, but with no real confirmation on if my guess is even correct...

 

[gorobei]

FYI: you dont use descents as a term for people, the word is descendants.

 

[Imp]

IMO Rosetta Stone is horrible. It can get you speaking and understanding some spoken phrases, but it never goes through the basics of WHY things are the way they are.

I tried Rosetta Stone to learn Spanish. It just goes through phrases and different mixes of words they've gone over. But I had no idea why I was saying "to drink" in one way in one phrase but differently in another. And it offered no explanation. Infuriating. Right now I'm just fucking confused with the different tenses because RS offers no explanation. The best I can do is observe differences and make a guess as to what the rule should be, but with no real confirmation on if my guess is even correct...

The guessing game does get annoying... Sometimes I just want a simple explanation of what the hell is going on from the picture, but give up. Eventually the repetition of the same phrase a dozen or so times gets through to me. All could have been done with a simple translation though... I think of it as Ikea instructions up until a while ago -- they used to not have a single word of anything, if I remember right. It's kind of how a grade 1-4, ten or less kid might learn a language. I didn't start analyzing sentences in depth in English until grade 7.

On the otherhand, going through an exercise book or dictionary and looking up every word isn't the best way to learn a language either. Having a formal class plus a private tutor/native speaker would rock, but $$$$$$.

As it stands, I think RS is okay. I went a bit crazy and got both Mandarin and French. My French is passable (second national language), so I'm trying to sync the two up to kind of help translate.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

The guessing game does get annoying... Sometimes I just want a simple explanation of what the hell is going on from the picture, but give up. Eventually the repetition of the same phrase a dozen or so times gets through to me. All could have been done with a simple translation though... I think of it as Ikea instructions up until a while ago -- they used to not have a single word of anything, if I remember right. It's kind of how a grade 1-4, ten or less kid might learn a language. I didn't start analyzing sentences in depth in English until grade 7.

On the otherhand, going through an exercise book or dictionary and looking up every word isn't the best way to learn a language either. Having a formal class plus a private tutor/native speaker would rock, but $$$$$$.

As it stands, I think RS is okay. I went a bit crazy and got both Mandarin and French. My French is passable (second national language), so I'm trying to sync the two up to kind of help translate.

I know that there are other programs out there with native speakers, and it is pretty cheap. It's basically just Mexicans speaking Spanish to you, or people living in Mexico. Just as outsourcing can save you money, so can getting tutors in the country of that language.

I still don't understand how to properly speak Spanish. I think for more nature people it definitely helps to be given the rules, or even just a super general explanation of why things are, instead of just chucking it all at you.

When I was learning English in elementary school I remember learning the rules and it helped a lot. They give you the most basic rules and you figure out and remember the exceptions through your own experience.

 

[OinkBoink]

I speak two Indian languages but I find Chinese (yes, I'm aware that there are different dialects like Mandarin, Cantonese etc.) to be a difficult language to comprehend. To an outsider, it sounds like 'ching chong chen niha...'. I've always wondered, if I go up to a Chinese person and say 'ching chong....(insert more Chinese sounding 'words' here)', would it actually end up meaning something ?

Apart from that, the script seems to be complicated.

 

[z0mb13]

I speak two Indian languages but I find Chinese (yes, I'm aware that there are different dialects like Mandarin, Cantonese etc.) to be a difficult language to comprehend. To an outsider, it sounds like 'ching chong chen niha...'. I've always wondered, if I go up to a Chinese person and say 'ching chong....(insert more Chinese sounding 'words' here)', would it actually end up meaning something ?

Apart from that, the script seems to be complicated.

If I go up to u and start speaking like Apu will u understand me more?

 

[OinkBoink]

If I go up to u and start speaking like Apu will u understand me more?

Right. What I wrote was in no way meant to be offensive or derogatory. It's just a thing I've wondered because of the way Chinese sounds. To an outsider, there seems to be a pattern to the way the words are spoken.

And Apu is a heavily exaggerated caricature. I, at least, sound nothing like that.

I sound more like the anchor in this video (and I can't help it if it displeases you): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y18IXhpclTM